“Had an opportunity! Make one, my dear lady. But I see how it is; you shrink before the tyrant. The ruffian that you have ennobled by consenting to wear his name, refuses to make the advance. Did you tell him that with three years’ allowance down, I’d throw off five per cent. for the ready loyalty? And he refuses! Why, my dear lady, it’s next to embezzlement. Upon my life, I wish to treat the individual with respect; nevertheless, it does flash across my mind that it’s nowhere written that a man may not thrash his own father-in-law.” “Basil, I will not hear this. I tell you, I will not. Whatever may be the faults of Mr. Jericho—and who should know them better than myself?—I cannot sanction such sentiments. At a proper season”— “My dear maternal lady, money isn’t like green peas, coming in with a season; the proper season for money’s when money’s wanted. A season with me, my dear madam, that lasts all the year round, I can assure you,” and again Basil kissed the hand of his anxious parent. “The truth is, Basil, I do believe that Mr. Jericho is very much pressed—very much. And you know he is indulgent to you; and so, you must not be hard upon him: indeed, my love, you must not. I am very much afraid,”—and Mrs. Jericho looked at the youth with new affection—“very much afraid that you’re an extravagant child.” “’Pon my life, my dear madam, when I see what other young fellows do, I feel myself a mean man; sometimes despise myself. You don’t know how I struggle to keep down the miser in me. I’ve a dreadful idea sometimes, of what my end will be.” “My dear Basil!” cried the mother, in tender alarm. “Sometimes, dear lady, I look into the middle of next century, and see myself a wretched being. Long beard, nails like fish-hooks, one shirt a year, and dinners of periwinkles. Unless I exert all my strength of mind, I shall go off in mildew—die a miser. ‘He denied himself the common necessaries of life’—that’s what I sometimes fear will be my history—‘and thus, it is believed, hastened his wretched and untimely end.’” “Basil! How can you!” “That’s my fate, I fear. ‘On his room being searched, bank-notes to a large amount were found in an old tinder-box, and a hundred and fifty guineas of the time of George the Second, secreted in a German flute!’ Sometimes, when I’m melancholy and disloyal, I think that’s my fate; but I’ll struggle against the feeling,” said Basil with filial emphasis—“I will struggle, my dear lady.” Whereupon Mrs. Jericho, haply comforted by his moral heroism, assured her boy that she would not let Mr. Jericho rest until he gave a definitive answer to his son-in-law’s moderate proposition. “That is all I want to know, my dear lady. Whether I’m to stop short at sudden ruin, or to go on. I’m disgusted with life at present, but I’m open to any arrangement that shall make me change my opinion. Hallo! Aggy, why you’re come out of a rainbow.”